Let’s pretend, just for a few minutes, there isn’t a pandemic with so many sad deaths and social distancing requirements.

Do you feel happy and content in your life?

I really do; I’d say joyful, most of the time. I’m madly in love with my still newlywed husband and the home and life we’ve created after 7 ½ years together. Oregon is so beautiful in the Spring it can literally take my breath away for a second or two. I feel I’ve finally found my work and place in the world in a way I never had before my 50^th birthday.

Yet a part of me is still always reaching for more. Not because I’m dissatisfied, but because… Well, because satisfaction may just mean settling, I suppose.

Which is why when Dean Graziosi (https://www.deangraziosi.com/) had a huge marketing campaign over a year ago and offered his book, Millionaire Success Habits: The Gateway to Wealth & Prosperity for free if I covered the shipping, I ordered it.

The book had been sitting on my bedroom nightstand, unread, for months until just three weeks ago.

When I got to page 34, something clicked. I reached out to my Wishweaving/Mastermind partner, Jennifer, and said, “We have to do this Seven Levels Deep exercise together.”

She agreed, and we did it.

Read Dean’s book to get the full impact of what he experienced in this exercise, about which he wrote: When you have a tough day, when things don’t go our way, when your new business fails, when things go wrong in your relationship, when your kids disappoint you, what pushes you to keep moving forward? Financial freedom? That’s not deep enough. You need to find the root of your “why.” Why are you reading this book? Why do you want to make more money? Why do you want wealth to come into your life? There is a much deeper level of purpose that is driving you.

Indeed, Dean Graziosi. 

Here are Jennifer’s and my results from the Seven Levels Deep exercise.

Jen’s responses:

1. Why do you want to get out of Corporate America and have your own business?

I want to create my own schedule and have the freedom to live my own life.

2. Why do you want the freedom to create your own schedule and life?

I want to express myself creatively and use my creative gifts for my income.

3. Why is that important to you?

Growing up, my talents and creativity were not only not valued, but often made fun of. I was told it was impossible to earn a living doing something interesting and creative. I want to prove them wrong.

4. Why is it so important to you to use your creative talents for income and to prove them wrong?

There are so many people out there like me, people who were told by our society that there’s only one mold of success. I think society’s wrong. I want to show people it’s possible to create a different kind of success, defined by what success is for them personally, not what society dictates.

5. Why is it important for you to become a beacon of light for these people?

In some ways I feel responsible for what I’ve taught my own children by example and wish I could go back and teach them differently. People need hope. For example, people I met volunteering at the soup kitchen would say they never had the opportunity to go to college, even using that as an excuse. I’m not bashing college or anything, but that’s buying into society’s definition of success. I want to show people they can be successful in other ways, by going after what they want, whatever that is.

6. Why is it so important to you to help people understand they have value, and can go after what they want and create their own definition of success?

Because when you have that belief inside of you, you can do anything. I didn’t have that belief in myself; for years, I always felt like a failure.

7. Why is it important to you to not only create and fulfill your personal vision of success, but to help and inspire others to do the same?

I feel we’re living in a lost world. People try so hard to fit in. I did that for years, instead of doing what makes me feel free. I don’t want to hide myself anymore. I want to show the world the true me, and build real relationships, based on the freedom of being myself.

Laura’s responses:

1. Why did you feel drawn to do this exercise now, and does a sense of security have anything to do with it, since that word has surfaced more than once in the last 24 hours?

My experience in 2010, having quit a job I hated to pursue the vocal training apprenticeship I loved, taught me how to trust I will always have enough, and I always have. I feel secure right now, yet I see my husband go through frequent insecurities and worries due to his childhood experiences. I know that I will be provided for and my life is sweet. Yet I’ve made substantially more money in the past and I’d like to get back to that level of income, savings and investments.

2. Why is getting back to that same level important to you?

In my 20’s, I didn’t make much money. But I enjoyed buying nice clothes and having cute things in my apartment. I was out at the restaurants and clubs, enjoying life, but had no money set aside. Now I have a great husband who is financially conservative and generous, and we can always pay our bills and not accumulate debt. My ex-husband was the opposite and would purchase status symbol items even though we couldn’t afford them. I want to be able to get back to my two vacations a year, put more into savings and investments, and not have to watch my pennies so closely!

3. Why is that?

I know I’m capable of so much more with my business. I’m proud I have walked away from jobs that didn’t feed my heart and soul; the money wasn’t worth it and I knew I deserved something better. I’m creative and I want to live more fully to my potential. My parents and brother have accumulated wealth through self-employment and sound investments, and I often feel I haven’t achieved what I’m meant to.

4. Why is reaching into your potential important to you?

I just have this sense of knowing it’s part of my purpose in this lifetime. I have a subconscious need to keep moving forward. I need to step out of anyone else’s mold and keep creating, learning, and growing.

5. Why is stepping out of the mold and striving for more so important to you?

I feel like I didn’t focus on any one dream or talent and pursue that when I was younger. I was all over the place, going from one thing to the next. If someone had helped nudge me in the direction of my natural talents, interests and gifts, if I’d gone after my dream of being a performer, for example, I’d likely have been successful. All these years later, it’s hard not to feel like I may have squandered my gifts, certainly my focus.

6. Why is this focus now important to you?

I’ve always felt I was different and that my differences weren’t necessarily celebrated. If nobody else is going to celebrate my differences, damnit, then I am!! It’s important to me to celebrate what makes me unique and to be an inspiration and teacher to those who feel stuck in a mold. It’s amazing how I’ve been able to do that as a voice teacher, while working with – not just people’s outer voices – but their inner voices as well.

7. Why is it important to inspire others who may be stuck in a mold?

I spent way too long focusing on things that didn’t support my deepest dreams and desires. Nobody told me that that to follow my inner voice and creative leanings would allow me to create a life incorporating what I now know are my three underlying guiding values: freedom, flexibility and creativity. Nobody should have to live in opposition to their deepest values. Living that way caused me unnecessary stress and unhappiness. I want to be the support to others that I didn’t have, that many people in our society don’t have. Everybody deserves to live a life incorporating their innermost guiding values and greatest talents and interests.

While Jen and I may have worded our responses differently, and our dreams and what we want to express in the world are different, I noticed one startling similarity. We both want to express our own unique creativity, self, in the world, and be rewarded and paid for it.

Doesn’t everyone, really, at heart?

Doing What They Do

As children we’re taught to stand in line and do what everybody else does. We’re taught to get good grades, follow the crowds, do what’s popular at the time, go to high school, get into a college, then find a job, start a 401K, save our money, and hopefully retire with enough to get us to death without running out. We’re taught to paint inside the lines because when we step outside the lines everybody looks at us funny…

When you follow the same path everybody else is on, you get where everybody else has been. I’m giving you permission to forget all the guidelines, forget all the rules that other people have put on you, and forget what society has told you is right or wrong. Be yourself and do what makes you happy. I’m not telling you to go out tomorrow and quit whatever it is that you do. What I am saying is, start realizing your true worth and know that you can evolve in the direction you choose. -Dean Graziosi, Millionaire Success Habits: The Gateway to Wealth & Prosperity

Please spread the love and pass this along to a friend!

Love Your Voice and Voice Your Love,

Laura

Lake Oswego’s Transformational Voice® Teacher (Transformational Voice® is a registered trademark of Transformational Voice® Training Institute, LLC, and Linda Brice.)